Propeller Steamer Sabino

Sabino, built in 1908 by W. Irving Adams at East Boothbay, Maine, is the sole survivor of the once-vast fleet of wooden commercial steamboats that operated on America’s lakes, rivers, and coastal waters. Built as Tourist, she carried passengers and light freight on Maine’s Damariscotta River until 1921. Her only mishap came on August 26, 1918, when she was swept under the Damariscotta-Newcastle Bridge and capsized. When she began service on the Kennebec River in 1922, her name was changed to Sabino. In 1927, Harry P. Williams of Portland, Maine, bought her and added sponsons, watertight compartments on her hull, for greater stability in the open waters of Casco Bay. He later sold her to Casco Bay Lines, where she worked until 1958, and after several more owners she was donated to Mystic Seaport in 1973. Though her superstructure has been altered several times, she still runs with her original seventy-five-horsepower Paine compound two-cylinder engine, built three miles downriver in Noank, and now travels the Mystic River, where passengers can watch the engineer answer the captain’s bell signals in a process unchanged for more than ninety years.

Mystic, Connecticut · United States